I meandered into the “sides” section of Ina’s cookbook again. Maybe it was the bright colors in the photograph or the fact that I like the color orange…whatever it was, I chose “orange-braised carrots and parsnips” for today’s recipe.

1 pound carrots with the greens attached

1 pound thin parsnips

1/3 cup small-diced shallots (1 large)

2 teaspoon grated orange zest

1 ¼ cups freshly squeezed orange juice (or bottled juice)

1/3 cup good olive oil

6 springs fresh thyme, tied with kitchen string

pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

kosher salt and black pepper

2 tablespoons minced fresh flat-leaf parsley

My first thought when I began reading this recipe was, do I even know what a parsnip looks like? Nope. I didn’t. I only found them at the grocery store after reading all of the tiny labels in the veggie section. Even then, I thought it was mislabeled because it looked like a geoduck!

This was my first time cooking with geoduck, er, I mean parsnips. Welcome to the club if this is also your first time! (They turned out to be very tasty.)

The spelling threw me off too. Gooeyduck? Geoduk? Afraid to say it is "Geoduck."

Definition of GEODUCK: a large edible burrowing clam (Panopea generosa syn. P. abrupta) of the Pacific coast of North America that usually weighs two to three pounds (about one kilogram)(taken from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geoduck)